Heads of states and European Union officials pose for a picture before the Eastern Partnership Summit session in Riga, Latvia, May 22, 2015. (Reuters/Ints Kalnins) / Reuters

Some European countries have once again failed to mend the deepening split on the continent, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, commenting on the Riga summit results. Instead, a furthering of east-west divisions prevailed, Moscow believes.

“Under the pressure of instantaneous interests of separate
participants, just another opportunity to make a step at
overcoming the deepening split of the continent has been
missed,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an official
statement on Friday.

Moscow was closely following the meetings of the bloc members and
leaders of some of the eastern European states, who gathered in
Latvia for a two-day summit this week. The EU leaders were
examining potential membership prospects for such former Soviet
republics as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and
Ukraine, as well as the development of its Eastern Partnership
program.

“Belonging to the European civilization... must bring closer
all Europeans from Lisbon to Vladivostok, and not to divide us by
posing a false ‘who are you with?’ question,” the Ministry
said, adding that Moscow is always ready to work
“constructively” with both the EU and other countries on
the continent, building a single economic and humanitarian space
“based on indivisible security for all.”

The Eastern Partnership can become effective only if its eastern
European participants are not forcefully faced with an
“either or” choice, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday. “Either you’re with the West
or with Russia is a false selection,” the diplomat told
journalists, as cited by RIA Novosti.

Despite some of the countries’ big hopes for EU integration, the
summit did not result in promises of any new immediate EU
memberships, with the bloc not expressing readiness to welcome
eastern non-member partners, including Ukraine.

Having announced that the membership issue wasn’t a focus, the
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said in Riga:
“They are not ready, we are not ready.”

“Nobody promised that Eastern Partnership would be an
automatic way to membership in the European Union,” EU
President Donald Tusk told journalists in Riga, offering no new
prospects of future acceptance to the six former Soviet nations.

3: EU is a trusted #EaP partner for
the long haul. #RigaSummit
not about giant steps forward but concrete progress
step-by-step

Saying that accepting new members could be a long process, having
both sceptics and supporters, the EU President also highlighted
the difference between the bloc members’ promises and its
aspiring non-members expectations.

“Amongst some of the older members of the European Union we
can detect high degree of expansion fatigue. They are in no mood
to make any promises to unstable and bankrupt countries such as
Ukraine, that even after a very long road they will be actually
able to join the EU,” Srdja Trifkovic, international affairs
analyst at the Chronicles magazine, told RT.
“From the beginning the Eastern Partnership has been designed to
satisfy the so-called European orientation of some of the
post-Soviet republics, without really giving them much in return,
either politically or financially,” Trifkovic said.